


it's alright, ma (i'm only bleeding)

by vtforpedro



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Credence Barebone Needs a Hug, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Original Percival Graves Needs a Hug, POV Original Percival Graves, Some Humor, Time Skips, homophobia? i dont know it, no prohibition shh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24211330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtforpedro/pseuds/vtforpedro
Summary: In which Percival Graves leaves one prison for another and meets a soul as in need of healing as his own.
Relationships: Credence Barebone/Original Percival Graves
Comments: 23
Kudos: 87





	it's alright, ma (i'm only bleeding)

Percival Graves had never considered himself an angry man before.  
  
He’d been accused of being too serious, too stuffy, yes, before it all happened. He’d been accused of being cold sometimes too, but he hadn’t always agreed with that. Lack of attachment or familiarity merely left him quiet, but not cold, not closed off and unwilling to open.  
  
But no one ever accused him of anger issues, of being volatile, of hostility, not before.  
  
_Before, before, before._  
  
His life has been split into two. _Before_ and _now._ Everything from before is a hazy memory and on the worst of days, it feels like it was never real. That it was something he had dreamed up, locked away in a cellar with no light, no water or food, kept alive merely with malicious magic.  
  
The mind can do that, he knows. Create a vivid landscape, a vivid life, and sometimes he has to drown himself in scotch, the more and more he starts to believe he has made it all up and life has only ever truly been the cellar, no Ilvermorny or MACUSA, no relationships and friends, nothing.  
  
Only the cold, dampness, and the steady drip of water, unceasing.  
  
When he wakes from his stupors and gazes around the apartment, he watches the ghost of himself, from before, walk across the dark hardwood floors and make tea in the kitchen, and knows that it was real, in some way.  
  
He had existed here, in these walls, healthy and alive and well, preoccupied with thoughts of work. So preoccupied he never really took the time to _live_ outside of work, to enjoy his apartment and the pleasures inside of it, beyond the scotch and shelves full of books. He never napped on the sofa or used his kitchen to its full potential, he never danced to music from his gramophone, he never brought anyone home to dance with.  
  
Seraphina tells him that he has plenty of time to do it now, on his _sabbatical,_ as she calls it, and he merely agrees with her, not telling her that it’s not the same.  
  
_Before_ he would have enjoyed it all, if he had just let himself.  
  
_Now_ he can’t stand the thought.  
  
Grindelwald used his apartment. He once walked here, wearing Graves’ face, wearing his clothes and using his wand. His ghost is here too and Graves can picture him better than he can picture himself.  
  
Once everything has slowed down, once he has enough strength to use magic freely again, and his ribs don’t show so much, he makes the much needed move.  
  
He chooses a brownstone, tall with beautiful architecture and many nooks and crannies. Wide, open rooms, bathed in sunlight from all of the large, sprawling windows. Cream-colored walls and cherry wood, brighter and more welcoming than his apartment. It’s too big, he knows, for only himself, but the way Tina beams when she steps into his living room tells him he’s made the right choice.  
  
The scotch still burns his throat every night and he still screams in rage when he remembers, when he sees the tremble in his hand that never goes away, when he knows what his face was used for.  
  
Seraphina won’t let him return to work anytime soon and he wants to rage at her, sometimes does, but deep down, he knows she’s right.  
  
He’s angry. Volatile and hostile. Unable to shake the demons from his head, unable to shake the image of his own face smirking at him, his own hand twirling his wand so gracefully as it cast the spell that had him twisting and screaming in agony. He can’t shake it, he can’t shake _him,_ and he wonders if he ever will.  
  
Graves knows what has happened now. Learned bits and pieces of it over the months, until he asked Tina to paint the entire picture for him.  
  
He thinks of the young man that Grindelwald used, used as much as he used Graves, and envies him sometimes for the mere fact that he’s dead. It’s a disgraceful thought, but maybe it’s better that way, so the Obscurial wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge of what he is, what he’s done, how he was lied to and used.  
  
How does one recover from it?  
  
Graves wishes he had the answer. Wishes he could find peace in it, wishes he could recover his dignity and his mind, wishes he could go back to work and not be stared at with pity, with apologetic eyes.  
  
It stung at first, no one noticing a lunatic had stolen his face and was walking among them for months. But then the sting had eased and he had remembered being accused of seriousness, stuffiness, even coldness. Perhaps they hadn’t been too far off.  
  
It pisses him off more, that he should be so separated from his colleagues, his friends, that they didn’t notice. That he always kept himself closed off, willing to open but never actually doing it, and it pisses him off that he knows it’s his own damn fault.  
  
Graves is an angry man now.  
  
_Now, now, now._  
  
When the scotch has run out for the third time this week, Graves leaves his home and goes to the no-maj corner store, where no one knows his name, where the owner is only just starting to recognize him, but doesn’t greet him with a respectful _Mister Graves, sir._  
  
He buys two bottles and steps back out into a grey day, cold and promising rain soon. He stares at the sky for a while, wishing it might turn blue, that he might feel the warmth of the sun on his skin.  
  
The clouds only seem to darken.  
  
Sighing, Graves pulls his scarf around his neck and begins the short walk home, taking the alley behind the store that will lead to his neighborhood.  
  
Something hits him then.  
  
Rather, bowls into him, tackling him into the brick wall, all of the air in his chest knocked out of him. He hears the bottles hit the ground below, shattering, and has a small moment to mourn the scotch before whoever has assaulted him pops him right in the nose.  
  
Graves grunts and curses as he tries to step away from his assaulter, who is hard to see in the shadow of the alley, but the other man doesn’t let up. He forgets his wand in favor of using his fists and arms to protect himself.  
  
Aurors are trained to protect themselves this way, of course, should their wands be lost, but part of him wonders if it’s the thrill of it, rather than merely forgetting his wand. The thrill of a fight, the thrill of adrenaline, the thrill of being alive.  
  
And then a bony, sharp elbow catches him in the nose again and blood spurts out and really, he’s just pissed off now.  
  
Graves moves quickly, grabbing at his assailant until he’s managed to find an arm and twists it behind the man’s back, his other arm wrapping around his neck.  
  
“That’s _enough!”_ he snarls, his voice echoing off the walls.  
  
But the man in his arms becomes vapor then, leaving him to stumble forward, gasping in surprise. He looks up quickly, at the figure standing near the end of the alley, lanky and tall, eyes completely white, the only eerie feature he can see.  
  
Graves senses the magic then, crackling in the air, the way it feels just before lightning strikes. It’s a wonder he hadn’t felt it immediately.  
  
Before _you would have,_ he thinks bitterly.  
  
“I’ve learned to control it,” the man says at the end of the alley.  
  
Graves pauses. His voice is soft, youthful, but so angry, so very, very angry.  
  
Full of lies too.  
  
_You haven’t learned to control shit,_ Graves wants to spit out, but he thinks that wouldn’t be entirely wise and doesn’t particularly have a death wish. Not today anyway.  
  
“You’re the Obscurial,” he says as he wipes away the blood steadily dripping from his nose with the back of his hand.  
  
He knows it’s true as he says it, knows that he’s been alive all this time, been in hiding. Scared, probably, and angry, angry just like he is. An orphaned, abused boy, scared but not able to hurt a fly, Tina had said. But Graves knows the anger Grindelwald has left behind, knows it intimately, and his heart aches for the young man at the end of the alley.  
  
Even if he’s kind of pissed he broke his nose. He supposes he doesn’t have a wand, but he wonders why he hadn’t ripped him apart, why he hadn’t left him scarred and disfigured in this alley, the life taken out of him in merely one breath.  
  
“You already know that,” Credence Barebone says, steel in his voice, even as it wavers.  
  
“You’d be surprised how little I know, actually,” Graves snaps and pulls out his wand.  
  
The air around him shudders and crackles once more, a warning and a threat, as the eyes before him continue to gleam white on a shadowed face.  
  
“Just fixing my nose,” Graves says calmly and flicks his wand. His nose cracks as it slots back into place and he curses as his eyes sting with tears of pain. “He kept my face pretty enough, I suppose, we wouldn’t want to go ruining it now, would we?”  
  
The white eyes are gone suddenly and the electricity in the air fades.  
  
Credence seems to fold in on himself, his shoulders arching up and his head bending, no longer straight and sure, no longer prepared to strike.  
  
“You’re not him. Not anymore,” is what he says, flat and emotionless.  
  
“No,” Graves agrees. “But if I thought I saw him, I might have done the same. Maybe with more finesse though.”  
  
Credence doesn’t say anything in reply to that and Graves cleans up the blood that got on his nicest scarf with a frown. He vanishes the broken bottles of scotch before he puts his wand away and raises his hands, approaching Credence.  
  
The sky is rapidly darkening but Credence is so pale, pale as a ghost, even more pronounced in the dark alley and by his dark clothing. It’s ripped in some places and not nearly warm enough for the day and Graves sees that he’s trembling.  
  
He knows it’s not entirely from the cold.  
  
Credence is watching him approach, his eyes a bit wild, but his head bent in a sort of submission that doesn’t sit well in Graves’ stomach.  
  
“Credence,” Graves says, willing his voice to be gentler now, even while he wants to scream.  
  
But Credence flinches as if he had anyway, his eyes fluttering shut, and turns his head away, as if hearing his name out of Graves’ mouth is physically painful.  
  
Graves supposes it might be, knowing Grindelwald had been crooning Credence’s name into his ear, manipulating him, letting him believe he was the only one he could trust. That he was his savior, from the church and the poison of religion and his mother, that he was his savior, showing him he had a greater purpose.  
  
He looks up at the sky as he purses his lips, the desire to scream unfurling in his chest like a beast awakening from a slumber, but he grits his teeth and forces it back down.  
  
When Graves looks at Credence again, he sees that he’s watching him now, suspicious but concerned, as well, such a shocking sight to Graves that he laughs a little.  
  
Credence frowns in confusion, clearly not seeing the humor that Graves is likely imagining is there anyway.  
  
“No one knows you’re alive,” he says before he regrets saying anything else.  
  
“I know,” Credence says and looks at his shoes. “I’ve been healing.”  
  
“You and me both,” Graves mutters and wishes he had the scotch so he might be able to start drinking a little earlier this evening. “Where?”  
  
Credence merely shrugs a shoulder and doesn’t answer.  
  
Graves peers at him for a while and frowns. He knows that _before_ he would have taken Credence into custody, if he could do so safely, that he would have him evaluated at MACUSA and see if they could rip out the Obscurus and save the troubled young man at the same time. And if they couldn’t… well, he knows what measures would be taken.  
  
But that was before and this is now.  
  
“Do you like scotch?”  
  
Credence glances up at him again, furrowing his brow.  
  
“...hmm, no, I imagine you’ve never had it,” Graves mumbles. “Come on.”  
  
He turns on his heel and stalks back down the alley, listening for the footsteps that begin to follow him, hesitant and shuffling, as if fearing he is leading them to catastrophe.  
  
But Graves merely goes back into the store and heads for the liquor, picking out his usual bottles of scotch and paying the owner, who looks as if he is judging Graves’ life choices.  
  
Credence hovers at the door, eyes darting back and forth, as if he fears his darkest nightmare might pop up from behind the counter or newspaper stand.  
  
Graves doesn’t blame him. He often expects the same thing.  
  
“Want anything?” Graves asks and nods when Credence shakes his head, expecting it.  
  
He leaves the store and doesn’t look behind him as he walks through the alley, his nerves a little frayed now. He half expects another elbow to the nose but he escapes the oppressive alley soon and walks to his neighborhood, knowing that he’s gained a shadow.  
  
Graves doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows he can’t send Credence to MACUSA, not yet, but he hasn’t got any fucking idea what he’s supposed to do with the most dangerous man in New York.  
  
He’s only twenty, Graves thinks, and he didn’t ask for his lot in life, just like Graves didn’t ask for a madman to steal his identity and lock him in a cellar.  
  
They’re both lost souls, angry souls, and he feels a kinship with Credence when he knows that’s a likely extremely dangerous and downright foolish thing to feel.  
  
Tina, he thinks. Tina will know what to do with Credence, since he can’t figure it out himself, _now’s_ values and beliefs far different than _before’s._  
  
When he gets to the brownstone, he walks up the stoop and opens the door, letting Credence wander in behind him, if he’d like. He won’t force him, but he has a feeling Credence is just as lost as he is, but with nowhere to go, while Graves at least has a warm home.  
  
“You moved,” Credence says as he steps inside, in that same flat, emotionless voice that has Graves mildly concerned.  
  
“Yes,” he answers as he closes the door behind Credence and gives him a wide berth as he walks to the living room. “Change of scenery and all that.”  
  
“It took me some time to find you.”  
  
“Ah.”  
  
_Before him_ would have noticed someone was following him. He opens one bottle of scotch and tips his head back as he drinks.  
  
“You’re different.”  
  
Graves nearly laughs again, but he merely grimaces as he wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand. “Yes, I would hope so.”  
  
“Your face is so familiar,” Credence says, almost shamefully, his eyes back on his shoes. “But your voice is different.”  
  
“Same voice, I’m afraid.”  
  
“No,” Credence says with a quick shake of his head. “Similar, but not the same. He used it for a different purpose. In a different way.”  
  
Graves feels mildly ill and collapses on his sofa. He takes another swig of scotch as he watches Credence, so young, so afraid, so broken. “You can sit,” he mutters, gesturing at the various pieces of furniture in the living room.  
  
Credence doesn’t move for a while, before he finally shuffles over to an armchair and sits, looking as uncomfortable as he could possibly be, his eyes darting around the living room, looking for danger. When he meets Graves’ eyes, they lower again, and Graves grimly wonders if he’s found it.  
  
“Are you going to call for them?” Credence asks very quietly.  
  
“Them?” Graves asks, but knows the answer. He wants to hear what it means to Credence.  
  
“The wizards and witches who will want me dead.”  
  
Graves’ nose twitches. He drums his fingers on his thigh and thinks about what Tina had told him happened in the subway. The way they blew him to smithereens, a boy scared and alone and used and abused, a boy who merely sought out comfort, a man who didn’t deserve to die.  
  
“No,” he answers shortly. “I’m not.”  
  
Credence looks at him again, this time holding eye contact. “Why?”  
  
“Because no one wants you dead,” Graves says. “Not anymore,” he amends, when Credence frowns. “It was a mistake then and they know it now. But I’m not calling for them anyway. Not until you ask me to.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Mister Graves, but I don’t think I’ll ever ask you to.”  
  
Graves smiles wryly. “You may yet,” he says and sighs as he looks at the bottle’s label. “Do you remember Tina?”  
  
Credence nods.  
  
“She works for me,” Graves says, though he’s not really sure anymore. “She’s… she can help you.”  
  
“She was kind,” Credence mutters as he looks at his hands.  
  
“That’s Tina,” Graves sighs and takes another swig.  
  
Credence frowns as he watches Graves for a while. Graves lets him, twirling the bottle in circles on his thigh, watching the amber liquid slosh up against the sides. He’d already be finished with it, if he didn’t have company.  
  
“How did he look like you?”  
  
“Polyjuice,” Graves says darkly. Credence merely stares blankly and he remembers that he’s been raised a no-maj, despite the immense amount of magic brewing inside of him. “It’s a potion he drank, with a bit of me in it, and it changed his appearance into mine.”  
  
Credence looks a bit green around the gills. “A bit of you…?”  
  
“Just my hair,” Graves says hastily, before Credence gets any worse ideas of the wizarding world than he already has. “You only need a few strands of hair and you can become anyone.”  
  
“That doesn’t seem legal.”  
  
Graves does laugh now. “It’s not, but when has that ever stopped a man like Grindelwald?”  
  
Credence flinches even more violently than he had in the alley and Graves curses himself. He likes to think that he doesn’t flinch when someone says the name, but he knows the storm it causes inside of him, and regrets being the one to remind Credence of him.  
  
Though he supposes Credence need only look at his face.  
  
“That man,” he says slowly, “is locked away.”  
  
“Is he?” Credence asks, skeptically.  
  
“For now,” Graves mutters grimly, rather of the same mind as Credence. “He does make it a habit of slipping out of his cages, doesn’t he?”  
  
They don’t say anything for a long while after that, not until the scotch is more than half gone and the room has become warm and the anger inside has softened into something more manageable.  
  
“You shouldn’t drink so much.”  
  
It shakes Graves out of his stupor like a cold bucket of water and he gapes at Credence, until Credence’s cheeks redden and he looks quickly away, muttering an apology.  
  
“You’ll notice, Credence, that a lot of people do things they shouldn’t.”  
  
Credence’s ears are red now, too, and Graves stares at them. Ears, of all things, tell him what he needs to know about Credence Barebone.  
  
A boy without a choice in the matter, a man on the run now, running from something he never would have chosen for himself. Shy and quiet and innocent, warped and corrupted into something else, but still retaining who he is at the heart of him.  
  
“How about you give it a try before deciding how much I should be drinking?”  
  
“No, thank you, Mister Graves, I’ve seen what alcohol does to men.”  
  
Graves feels vaguely insulted, until he remembers his father, looming over him in the dark with glassy eyes and whiskey on his breath, snarling persecutions.  
  
He feels ill again and sets the bottle on the coffee table in front of the sofa, the scotch in his stomach no longer a comfort and he curses Credence for that, just a little, before he feels like an idiot for doing so.  
  
“Tina will like you,” he declares instead.  
  
Credence looks confused, but he doesn’t say anything, only nods.  
  
“Clothes,” Graves mutters as he runs his hands through his hair. Credence is looking concerned for him again and he sighs. “For you. Those are rags by now. We’re about the same height, I should have something you can wear.”  
  
After Credence has nodded meekly, like he wants to say _no, thank you, Mister Graves,_ but will spare Graves the argument, he ventures upstairs on wobbly knees.  
  
He has gotten rid of most of his previous wardrobe and has been slowly adding to it over the last month, now that he’s more than skin and bones. Credence still is, he thinks sourly, and probably always has been. He picks out a black turtleneck, one of his favorites, and a pair of grey slacks, thinking that Credence might favor darker colors.  
  
Graves stumbles back downstairs, nearly missing the last few steps, but he manages not to break his neck. He walks into the living room and Credence looks sharply at him, as if he had been expecting someone else.  
  
_We’ll work on that,_ Graves thinks, as he hands Credence the clothing.  
  
“Thank you, sir,” Credence says as he takes them and shuffles to his feet, his posture dreadful and submissive still.  
  
_We’ll work on that too._  
  
“Bathroom is down the hall on the left,” Graves says. “Are you hungry?”  
  
Credence nods.  
  
“Anything you don’t like?”  
  
“I haven’t had the luxury of disliking food,” Credence mumbles.  
  
“Well,” Graves sighs as he pats Credence’s shoulder, missing the way he sags in relief at the touch. “We’ll work on that.”  
  
——  
  
Graves doesn’t call Tina for the first few days. He wants to let Credence calm down, let him realize that he is safe in his presence, the way he never was before. That the brownstone is a place he can be at peace in, the way that Graves is at peace in it. Being at peace in their own minds is a different story, but maybe they’ll eventually get there.  
  
He feeds Credence as often as he can, once he gets used to cooking again, and watches as Credence takes in a home that works on magic. He stares at the spoon stirring sauce on the stove or the laundry washing itself and he especially stares at the books that he opens, at the pictures inside of them that move and wave at him, smiling and beckoning him to read their words.  
  
Credence is quiet, but so is Graves, and they don’t speak all that much. It’s hard enough not startling each other every time they appear together in the hall or nearly run into each other rounding a corner, leaving Graves breathless once he’s out of sight of Credence, clutching at his heart.  
  
They both have nightmares and seem to switch off every night who will be waking who with their screams or tears and Graves is slightly concerned when Credence mumbles _at least I haven't destroyed the house_ _yet._  
  
But this sort of healing will take time, he knows, has had that beaten into his head by Seraphina, and he doesn’t think that Credence will be healed here. Graves is too… fucked up for that, too much in his own head with his own demons, to help Credence heal his.  
  
So he calls for Tina.  
  
When she knocks on his door early one morning, earlier than Credence normally wakes (and Graves, but he asked her to be here at this hour), Graves sees that she has brought Queenie along with her.  
  
Tina’s lips are tight and pursed, the way they are when she’s worrying, but she gives him a short smile as she steps inside. Queenie beams and winks as she follows and he locks the door behind them.  
  
He makes coffee as they speak in quiet voices.  
  
“How has he seemed?” Tina asks as she stirs sugar into hers.  
  
“As well as can be expected, I think,” Graves mutters. “I’ll let him tell you that.”  
  
“But will he tell me the truth?”  
  
“I can’t speak for Credence Barebone,” Graves says stiffly and firmly. “Nor do I want to.”  
  
Tina frowns, but she nods as she chews on her knuckles, and looks at Queenie. Queenie is smiling as she sips her coffee, like she knows something they don’t - which very well may be true, Graves thinks, but it didn’t come from his head.  
  
“What did Madam Picquery have to say when you visited the office last week?” Tina asks after a while, clearly unsettled by any sort of silence.  
  
Graves stares down at the dark liquid in his mug. “A year,” he says and sighs as Tina inhales sharply. “Do you disagree, Goldstein?”  
  
“No, sir,” Tina answers carefully. “I just wonder what it might do to you, a year with no work.”  
  
“Hopefully it’ll only make me fat,” he says dryly and smiles a little as Queenie giggles and Tina frowns in disapproval. “I have no intentions of being worse off in a year, Goldstein, and I won’t be changing Seraphina’s mind as it is.”  
  
Tina sighs and nods. “And what do you want us to do about Credence?”  
  
Graves shifts uncomfortably, thinking of the young man upstairs, hopefully sleeping soundly. Not plagued by any nightmares.  
  
“I can’t give him the help he needs here,” he says quietly. “I can’t help heal him the way he needs to be healed. I certainly can’t help him control the Obscurus.”  
  
“Why not?” Queenie asks.  
  
Graves and Tina gape at her until she shrugs.  
  
“Why not? He’s better now than he was four days ago,” she says. “He’s comfortable here.” She sighs. “As comfortable as he can get anyway.”  
  
“Can you read him from that far?” Graves asks, genuinely impressed.  
  
Queenie laughs. “No, silly,” she says. “Credence, honey, you can come join us, if you want.”  
  
Graves feels his heart drop to the bottom of his stomach and twists around to look at the corner leading into the hallway and the stairs. There’s a bit of silence and he holds his breath until Credence appears, shuffling inside and hanging his head, like he’s ashamed.  
  
“No need for that,” Queenie says, confirming Graves’ suspicions. “You heard unusual voices, of course you’d be worried. Do you like coffee, honey?”  
  
“Yes,” Credence mutters as he looks quickly between their faces, then back at the floor. “Mister Graves introduced me to it.”  
  
“He would,” Tina mutters and flicks her wand so the carafe fills another mug and a chair pulls itself out for Credence. She looks overwhelmed with relief. “Please join us, Credence.”  
  
Credence looks nervous and a bit wild, his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, and for a moment Graves is frightened he might actually destroy his house now. But Credence sighs, his shoulders slumping, and he comes to the table and sits, wrapping his hands around the warm mug.  
  
He glances up at Tina, who looks far too motherly and concerned for Graves’ tastes, then at Queenie, pausing as she beams at him.  
  
“Aw, thank you, honey!” Queenie says. “You’re so sweet. Most men don’t think that about me. Percival didn’t tell me how sweet you are.”  
  
Credence merely stares, his mouth open in surprise.  
  
“Sorry,” Graves says hastily. “Queenie is Tina’s sister. She’s an accomplished Legilimens.”  
  
Credence looks at him blankly.  
  
“I can read people’s minds, honey, hear their thoughts,” Queenie says gently.  
  
None of them, least of all Credence, seems to expect the mug in his hands to explode, ceramic shooting like shrapnel all over the kitchen.  
  
Credence leaps away from the table and Graves notices the blood already dripping onto the floor and leaps after him, but Credence flinches away from the movement, holding his hands up like he expects a blow to come.  
  
Graves freezes, his heart hammering against his ribcage, a cold sweat on his forehead, his muscles tense. Tina is cleaning the mess and healing a few nicks on her and Queenie’s cheeks.  
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Credence begins to say, frantically.  
  
“You didn’t do nothing wrong, honey,” Queenie says as she picks a piece of ceramic out of her hair and sets it aside, smiling all the while. “Suppose we should’ve told you that sooner. You’re new to our world, after all, and reading minds sounds so scary. Aw, honey, I’d never think that about you. You’re a real sweetheart.”  
  
Credence flinches but he lowers his hands away from his head and Graves sees that they’re trembling badly, only making the bleeding worse.  
  
“Credence,” he says quietly. Credence’s shoulders relax but he doesn’t look at Graves, merely turns in his direction. “I should’ve told you about Queenie. I’m sorry. But there’s nothing in your head that will cause you or anyone else harm. Let me see your hands.”  
  
Credence is trembling from head to toe now but he holds out his hands and Graves grimaces at the deep cuts in them. He pulls out his wand, slowly, and heals the cuts and washes away the blood.  
  
“He used his hands. Not a wand,” Credence mumbles, wildly still, only for Graves to hear.  
  
Graves wishes he hadn’t. “Yes, well, wandless magic seems more impressive to even those who use wands,” he says quietly. “I imagine it was even more so to someone that didn’t know wizards existed.”  
  
Credence flinches a little at his words, but he nods after a while and calms more as his hands are healed. “I didn’t know it was mostly done with wands until they came after me. Can you use wandless magic, Mister Graves?”  
  
“Better than me,” Tina pipes up. “Better than anyone at MACUSA.”  
  
“Another way he blended in so easily,” Graves mutters darkly, but not so Tina can hear. “I prefer my wand these days.”  
  
“Credence does too,” Queenie says with a smile.  
  
Graves sighs as he catches sight of Credence’s face, who looks rather overwhelmed still. “She’s harmless,” he says. “And she won’t judge you. She doesn’t judge anyone’s thoughts.”  
  
“Thoughts aren’t always who we are,” Queenie affirms. “They’re only thoughts.”  
  
“Can you… not, please?” Credence asks, pleadingly.  
  
“Sorry, honey, I can’t turn it off. But I won’t say nothing more about them, if you’d like.”  
  
“Thank you,” Credence sighs in relief and Graves leads him back to the table, cleaned and spotless, with a new fresh mug of coffee waiting for Credence.  
  
He doesn’t wrap his hands around it.  
  
“Are you alright?” Graves asks, his heart not calm yet and a sense of danger still keeping the hair on the back of his neck on end.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Credence says. “I didn’t… I’m sorry. I’m working on controlling it.”  
  
“That’s good, Credence,” Tina says. “So good. We’ll help you control it even more.”  
  
“I’m going with you,” Credence says in his flat, emotionless voice.  
  
Graves doesn’t miss the sympathetic frown on Queenie’s face, which seems more than what the occasion might call for, and wonders what Credence is really thinking.  
  
Tina nods. “It’ll be for the best. We can keep you safe, until you’re ready for more. Queenie can help you control your magic, to learn some of it, if you’d want, and I can try to help you control the Obscurus.”  
  
Credence merely stares at the table and doesn’t answer her. Tina looks at Graves with a frown, but Queenie clears her throat.  
  
“What do _you_ want, honey?”  
  
Credence shakes his head.  
  
“Of course it matters what you want,” Queenie says, then gasps and covers her mouth. “Oops, sorry, honey. But it _does.”_  
  
Graves watches Credence with apprehension, afraid that he knows what he wants, afraid that he’ll say it and leave him no choice. He sees the way Credence looks at him, isn’t blind to it, but he’s been ignoring it, the implications behind it too frightening. He doesn’t want to ask because he doesn’t want to know, but he knows he’s doing a disservice to Credence for it.  
  
It makes him feel like a coward, not something he’s used to feeling, and he grits his teeth.  
  
“It’s fine,” Credence says after a while. “I don’t mind coming with you.”  
  
Tina sighs in relief and smiles affectionately at Credence, looking like she’d like nothing more than to crawl across the table and stroke his hair. Graves is glad she resists the temptation.  
  
“It’ll be for the best,” he finds himself saying, echoing her earlier words. He looks away as Credence’s shoulders droop more. “They’re lovely women. You’ll have a good time.”  
  
“You think we’re lovely? Aww,” Queenie says, more mockingly than anything, and he sighs. “Teenie, he thinks we’re lovely.”  
  
“Can’t imagine how much it hurt to get out,” Tina says with a smirk in his direction. She softens as she looks at Credence. “Would you like to gather your belongings?”  
  
“I don’t have any,” Credence says blandly.  
  
Tina shoots Graves a dirty look and his hackles rise. “Not from lack of trying,” he says defensively.  
  
“I like Mister Graves’ clothes,” Credence says and for once he tilts his chin up defiantly.  
  
Graves feels his cheeks warm and coughs a little as Queenie grins and Tina looks concerned all over again.  
  
“We’ll get you some like them then,” Queenie says. “And maybe a wand.”  
  
“Spellbooks too,” Graves mutters. “First year.”  
  
Tina nods. “Good idea,” she says and smiles at Credence. “You’re going to learn so much about our world and your magic.”  
  
Credence frowns. “Is it a good idea? To use magic when I can barely…” he trails off and opens his hands wide, as if the wounds might still be there.  
  
“Your wand is the best way to control your magic,” Tina says. “A less dangerous outlet that requires intent and purpose, rather than emotion. You’re very powerful, Credence, and I won’t be surprised if it comes to you naturally.”  
  
Graves agrees with Tina on this but he doesn’t say it, frowning instead at Credence’s hunched shoulders and pursed lips. He’s not happy, clearly, but Graves can’t keep him. He can’t help him, he can barely get himself to stop drinking most nights.  
  
He’s a gifted teacher, when it comes to mentoring new Aurors, but he’d be shit at mentoring a new magic user, let alone one with a raging ball of furious Obscurus in them.  
  
Who may or may not look at him like they’re carrying a torch for him.  
  
_Not for you,_ Graves thinks firmly, _for who he knew before._  
  
He thinks he may let Tina know about it. If Grindelwald had… done anything to Credence, more than they know about, it might be wise for her to know that before living with him. And even if Grindelwald didn’t go so far and it’s merely an attraction to the charm the man naturally possesses, well, it’s still better that he doesn’t keep looking at the face of the man who wooed him.  
  
“What do you think, Mister Graves?” Credence asks him, not meeting his eye.  
  
Graves studies him for a while. Perhaps for too long, because Credence looks at Queenie with a frown and she laughs.  
  
“Trying to read his thoughts is like trying to break into an unbreakable vault, honey.”  
  
He frowns menacingly at that, but Queenie merely winks and he sighs. “Auror training requires you to become an expert Occlumens,” he says. Credence only gives him his familiar blank stare. “Occlumency is the defense against Legilimency, which our Queenie here is so good at.” He knocks on his forehead. “Once you’ve mastered it, no one can get in.”  
  
“I think I’d like to become an Auror then,” Credence muses.  
  
Graves laughs, and Queenie too, while Tina grimaces. Credence looks embarrassed, his cheeks red and his shoulders arching up impossibly close to his ears.  
  
“You’d be a good one too, I’m sure,” Queenie says. “But let’s think about getting you that wand first, huh?”  
  
Credence nods meekly.  
  
They talk about breakfast then, Queenie offering to make him whatever he’d like once they’re home, and Tina rambles about getting his measurements so she might order some clothes for him and… it’s alright.  
  
_It’s alright,_ Graves thinks firmly. It’s what he wants and most of all, it’s what’s best for Credence.  
  
Even if it feels like the walls are already closing in, knowing that this amazing young man will no longer be under his roof where he can watch out for him, where Credence can watch out for _him._  
  
But he’s Percival Graves, damnit, he’s never needed anyone watching out for him.  
  
Least of all an Obscurial who destroyed half of the city the last time he got angry.  
  
“Mister Graves?”  
  
He looks up from his hands on his lap and sees that Tina is watching him, her brows knitted together, chewing her lower lip. Queenie and Credence are by the door, Queenie chatting animatedly while Credence nods. Graves sees him smile and feels his heart constrict in a rather worrying way.  
  
“Sir?”  
  
“I’m fine, Goldstein,” he says and stands, clapping her on the shoulder. “It’s just been an interesting few days. Come back tomorrow. Just you. I need to speak with you about a few things.”  
  
“Of course, sir,” Tina says with a frown. “Will you be—”  
  
“I’m fine,” Graves says more stiffly. “Worry about Credence, not me.”  
  
Tina sighs and nods. Graves follows her to the living room and looks at Credence. There’s something wounded in his eyes, something that reminds Graves of what he used to see in the mirror, when he was a child. When his father would leave for weeks at a time and his mother would leave the nanny in charge of him so she could drink wine and eat cake with other witches downstairs in the parlor.  
  
Abandonment, he thinks, and it nearly takes his breath away.  
  
“You’ll do well, Credence,” he hears himself say, mechanically. “Tina or Queenie can get in touch with me if you have any questions.”  
  
Credence nods and still doesn’t meet his eye. “Goodbye, Mister Graves.”  
  
Queenie looks so damn sad too and Graves wants to tell her to stop reading Credence’s mind, but he knows she really can’t turn it off. But he sees Credence’s real grief on her own face and hates it.  
  
They’ve barely spoken, but they share so much, don’t they? The same trauma, the same anger, the same sort of beast festering away inside. Credence’s beast can destroy cities and Graves’ can destroy his own mind, if he lets it.  
  
He’s not sure how much either of them actually controls their beasts.  
  
But Tina ushers them out, apparently oblivious to it all, or pretending she is anyway, and the door closes behind her and the silence settles in.  
  
——  
  
The first couple of days are the hardest. Graves wanders the brownstone and sees Credence, sees the way he tried to make himself as small as possible, wherever he had been. Sees himself not correcting it the way he should have, not helping as much as he could have. It had only been a few days and yet Graves has the sense that he’s failed Credence somehow.  
  
The conversation with Tina had gone… well, he supposes, though it had been hard to voice his concerns. Tina seemed properly repulsed and appropriately concerned, promising him that she would talk to Credence about it, if it seemed safe to do so. He tells her to make sure Queenie is with them, to hear the real truth if Credence doesn’t say it, and maybe it should make him feel bad, but he’s an Auror after all and such measures are sometimes required.  
  
Though he doesn’t think Credence will misunderstand why Queenie is there.  
  
Graves drinks and buys more scotch and still screams almost nightly. Wakes in a cold sweat, his own cruel eyes staring at him with detachment, not letting him get any proper rest. He hopes that the girls’ presence has helped Credence stop his own screaming.  
  
Tina sends him a small note, asking if he might floo them sometime soon, and he puts it off, of course, like a coward. He pretends he’s busy, even though he is only busy drinking, but when he starts to feel even more like a coward, he shaves and slicks his hair back and tosses powder into the fire.  
  
Green flames roar up and he tosses a note inside and waits. When he gets the note back with a scrawled word of approval, he kneels down and sticks his head into the flames.  
  
Queenie is on the other side, wandering around their small living room, waving her wand. Books close with a _thump_ and parchment paper whips into tight rolls and quills organize themselves on the table.  
  
Credence has been studying then, he thinks, and feels an odd sense of pride, even while his stomach churns unpleasantly.  
  
He won’t examine why that is.  
  
“Hi, Percival,” Queenie says as she tucks her wand into her dress and comes over to the fire, sitting in front of it. “We thought you might have gone on vacation.”  
  
“If only,” he mutters, but he knows she’s teasing him anyway. “Progress report?”  
  
Queenie raises her eyebrows. “He’s not a case, you know,” she says.  
  
Graves frowns. He knows that perfectly well, thank you. “He’s not,” he says and sighs. “How is Credence doing?”  
  
“That’s better,” Queenie says with a smile. “Good, honey, real good. Mostly anyway. He’s quiet, isn’t he? Well, he’s quiet out loud.” She laughs. “Thoughts going a mile a minute, that one. He’s real smart, smarter than Tina and I combined, I think.”  
  
“He really is,” Tina says as she comes out of her bedroom, quietly closing the door behind her. “We got him a wand two days ago and he’s taken to it as well as we thought he would.”  
  
“Too scared to use it properly though,” Queenie says and hums. “He won’t try anything harder than the most basic spells.”  
  
Graves frowns at this, but he supposes Credence might be thinking of all the destruction his magic has caused, whether it was from the Obscurus or the more benevolent magic that courses through his veins.  
  
“Where is he?” he asks abruptly, a bit worried Credence might be lurking around a corner and listening to them talk about him the way that they are. Or that he might be outside, exposed to danger.  
  
“Oh, he’s out, honey,” Queenie says. “Down at the bakery.”  
  
Tina scowls at this, more menacingly than usual, her lips pursed tight.  
  
“And the bakery is bad because…?” Graves asks, fearing the worst.  
  
“No reason,” Queenie says hurriedly.  
  
“For every reason!” Tina bursts out. “That no-maj owns it!”  
  
“And he doesn’t remember anything,” Queenie says, wounded in a way Graves has never heard. “We’re only supportin’ his dream, Teenie, he doesn’t know why.”  
  
Graves stares between them. Queenie’s eyes are downcast and Tina’s cheeks are ruddy with anger. He cocks an eyebrow, his fear dissipating. “Fraternizing with no-majs, Queenie?”  
  
Queenie huffs at that and blinks her eyes quickly and Graves is rather mortified to see the tears in them.  
  
“I was joking,” he says hastily. “Sorry.”  
  
“Well, it’s true,” Tina says, puffed up with righteous indignation. “He was the no-maj I told you about, sir, the one who helped Mister…” she trails off, swallowing dryly. “Mister Scamander, gather up all his creatures.”  
  
Graves stares at her, her own eyes downcast now, and wonders if they’ve all been left a mess by the past year. Some wounds go deeper than others, he thinks, but they’re all wounds nonetheless and wounds bleed.  
  
They stay silent for a while, mourning their respective losses, until the front door opens.  
  
Graves hardly has the time to be surprised or - Merlin forbid - happy to see Credence, as he wanders in sheepishly, looks at the girls and Graves’ head hovering in the fireplace, and promptly walks right back out.  
  
“Damn,” Tina says. “We haven’t gotten to the Floo Network yet.”  
  
Queenie giggles a little as she dabs at her eyes. “I’ll go after him,” she says and stands, hurrying for the door.  
  
“It didn’t happen, you know,” Tina says in a rush once the door closes behind Queenie and he looks at her, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“Grindelwald,” she mutters and grimaces apologetically as he scowls. “He didn’t do anything to Credence.” She pauses. “Not any more than we know about anyway.”  
  
Graves could kiss her. It’s a relief he hasn’t felt since the day she fetched him out of a cellar and he realized he was still alive, still breathing, not yet knowing how destroyed his mind would be. It’s immense and he closes his eyes briefly, grateful for this, grateful that Credence has at least escaped one type of abuse.  
  
“Good,” he breathes. “Thank you for looking into it.”  
  
Tina looks a bit green anyway.  
  
“What?” Graves asks, all of his relief vanishing like smoke in the wind. “Goldstein?”  
  
“It’s just that…” Tina trails off, a faint redness to her cheeks. “Credence is, um…”  
  
But she doesn’t get to finish, because the door opens again and Queenie and Credence come inside. She’s holding his arm and blabbering about how the Floo Network was founded and all the good it’s done for the wizarding world.  
  
Graves takes Credence in. He’s got new clothes, clothes that fit perfectly, dark in color, of course, but comfortable and warm. He’s still got that awful haircut, he notices, and feels as if he failed Credence again. He should have cut it himself, freed him from the reminder of what his mother did to even his appearance.  
  
Queenie coaxes Credence over to the fire and Graves sighs as he sees that Credence will barely look at him.  
  
But then, it might just be that his head floating in green flames is an unusual sight.  
  
“Credence,” Graves says.  
  
“Hello, Mister Graves,” Credence says as he looks somewhere above Graves’ head.  
  
“How are you?”  
  
“I’m fine, Mister Graves.”  
  
“Okay, good. How are you really?”  
  
Credence frowns and meets his eyes this time. There’s a spark of something defiant in them and Graves can barely refrain from cheering at it, so glad he is that it’s not submission for once in Credence’s life.  
  
“I’m fine,” he says slowly. “Good,” he amends, when Graves merely raises an eyebrow. “I’m learning… quite a bit.”  
  
“He’s whipping through those first year books like it’s nothing,” Tina says with a smile and shoulders squared, proud. “Faster than I ever did.”  
  
Graves wants to tell her that, _yes, you were eleven at the time,_ but he knows it’s more than that. Credence has immense power, but he’s new to their world, scared of it still, scared of himself. But it’s where he belongs too and Graves knows he must feel it, feel that it’s right.  
  
Of course he’ll drink like a man starved of water, now that he can.  
  
“That’s good,” Graves says. “Let me see that wand.”  
  
Credence’s ears are red and it makes something in Graves’ heart constrict all over again. But he pulls out his wand from his pocket and comes closer, holding it out for examination.  
  
It’s a dark thing, the wood black, straight as a razor.  
  
“Black walnut,” Graves mumbles and thinks that it’s so fitting it’s painful. “The core?”  
  
“Unicorn hair,” Credence says, almost reverentially, and Graves can’t help but smile. “Somewhat pliable.”  
  
“A good wand,” Graves says fondly, glad for the unicorn hair in a way he won’t explain to Credence. “Fitting.”  
  
“That’s what the wandmaker said,” Credence says as he tucks his wand back into his pocket. “It took a while to find it.” He clears his throat. “The first seventeen he gave me exploded.”  
  
Graves opens his mouth, then closes it, and looks at Queenie, who is biting her lip with the effort to not laugh, while Tina merely looks pained at the memory.  
  
“Not… so unusual,” Graves says carefully, but Credence gives him such a flat look that he can’t help but laugh. “Your magic is eager to be used, Credence, it’s never been properly channeled before. I’m sure Mister Jonker understood.”  
  
“Kept saying they were rubbish wands anyway,” Queenie says with a grin.  
  
Credence is blushing and staring at his shoes again and Graves smiles.  
  
“You’re making progress,” he tells him. “Well done.”  
  
“Are you making progress, Mister Graves?”  
  
Graves stares at him for a while, a bit speechless. He isn’t sure if he’s being cheeky or if there’s a reprimand in there somewhere, because Credence knows exactly how Graves’ days have gone. It’s not a question asked genuinely, he decides, with kindness, and Graves begins to feel like a coward all over again.  
  
It’s becoming familiar and he despises himself for it.  
  
“A question for another time, maybe,” Tina says cautiously as she peers between Graves and Credence, who are staring at each other.  
  
Credence looks away first, down at his shoes again, and the spell is broken.  
  
Graves feels a cold sweat on his back and hands and is glad they’re not visible to the others. But he feels clammy all over and wonders if he’s gone as pale as Credence.  
  
“Goodbye, Mister Graves,” Credence says and turns, walking across the apartment to the bedroom. He shuts the door behind him.  
  
“Should I…?” Tina asks as she gestures at the door.  
  
“Leave him alone, Teenie. For a little while,” Queenie says gently. “He’s only upset Percival hasn’t visited sooner.”  
  
Before Graves can begin to feel guilty about that, Queenie digs the knife in a little bit deeper.  
  
“He misses your face. He thinks you hate him.”  
  
“I don’t hate him,” Graves snarls. Queenie doesn’t look offended. “He doesn’t miss _my_ face, Queenie, and you know that.”  
  
“He does, honey,” Queenie says. “Every day. But he’s trying to separate you two, yeah. Talks to himself a lot about it.”  
  
Graves feels ill. Trying to separate him from Grindelwald, what he feared, what he fears Credence may never be able to do. It’s best if he stays away.  
  
“Someone’s at the door,” Graves chooses a blatant lie. “Contact me if anything goes wrong.”  
  
“Or right,” he hears Queenie sing-song as he pulls his head out of the fireplace and vanishes the flames quickly.  
  
Graves falls back on his ass, his breathing shallow and his hands trembling. Though they never really stop trembling, do they?  
  
It takes him a while to get himself off the floor and he grabs the bottle of half-full scotch on the coffee table, opening it. He holds it up above his head grimly.  
  
“To you, Credence Barebone.”  
  
——  
  
Graves drinks his way through another week and ignores the post building up on his table. He shoves anything from MACUSA down to the bottom of the pile. They become a bit more insistent after that, letters floating in from under the door or fluttering down his fireplace. He’s blocked his fireplace for now from the Floo Network, so that no one decides to make a personal visit, whether they are from MACUSA or not.  
  
He spends most of his days lounging on his sofa and drinking scotch and blearily reading any book he clumsily picks off the bookshelves, not looking at their titles.  
  
Most of the time he wakes up late in the evening, sick with hunger and thirst, aching for his bed upstairs that he doesn’t always make it to.  
  
He forces himself not to think about Credence Barebone or the Goldstein sisters, pushes them out of his mind as a job taken care of, and focuses on trying to keep his hand steady, to stop it shaking so much every time he casts a spell.  
  
One night after glaring at his hand and muttering angrily at it, he gives up and finishes the bottle, and doesn’t remember much after that. Not until he hears a voice, feminine and powerful, oh so close, but that can’t be, there are too many enchantments…  
  
Graves jerks out of his drunken stupor and flails for his wand, but he can’t find it and drastically tries to remember a spell, any spell, to stop whoever has crossed his enchantments and protections.  
  
“At least you haven’t fallen so far you’ve locked me out as well.”  
  
Graves freezes, and then relaxes, turning on to his back on the sofa and peering up at the tall, poised woman standing above him, a frown of disapproval on her face. He gives her a lazy salute and she sighs, shaking her head, and finds her own seat on the armchair Credence typically occupied.  
  
He watches her, thinking that she looks far more comfortable than he ever did. But then she was always able to make herself comfortable anywhere, blending in well, becoming part of wherever she found herself. Poised and confident. A trait she taught him, once upon a time ago.  
  
“You’ve never looked so pitiful, Percy.”  
  
Graves smacks his lips as he tries to get some moisture back into his mouth and sits up a little, so he’s lounging back against his pillow, rather than smashed against it.  
  
“I happen to think I looked a lot worse coming out of that hole in the ground.”  
  
Seraphina sighs. “Barely,” she says as she scans his home. Her eyes hover on the multiple empty bottles of scotch on the coffee table, but she doesn’t comment on them as she meets his eyes again. “This isn’t what I meant when I asked you to take a sabbatical.”  
  
“Yes, that’s precisely why I asked you not to call it a sabbatical,” Graves says as he rests his hands on his belly. “What do you want, Sera?”  
  
“You’ve been ignoring my missives for a week now. I suppose I wished to see if you were still alive.”  
  
“Alive and better than ever.”  
  
Seraphina smiles wryly. “You’ll be happy to know that Goldstein is doing well in your position. Not as well as you, of course, but it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be back.”  
  
“Mmm… eleven months, one week and three days, from my last count.”  
  
“Thank Merlin you’re counting.”  
  
Graves smiles flatly. “What do you really want?”  
  
“Something is being hidden from me,” Seraphina says as she steeples her fingers together and looks over them at Graves. “Something you’ve orchestrated and that the Goldstein sisters are a part of.”  
  
Graves supposes he should have expected it. If he’s honest with himself, he would have expected it sooner. Tina and Queenie are awful liars most of the time.  
  
“I have no idea what you mean,” he says as he stretches and yawns.  
  
“I didn’t think you would,” Seraphina says dryly. “But you’ll tell me what it is regardless.”  
  
Graves scratches at the thick stubble on his chin as he peers at her curiously. “I’m on sabbatical. I’m afraid I don’t have to answer you.”  
  
“You’ll answer me if you ever want your position back.”  
  
“Like you’d ever give it to someone else.”  
  
“I wouldn’t, but then I walked in here and saw you drooling on yourself.”  
  
“I’ll be back in tip top shape by the end of the year,” Graves says breezily. “Maybe then I’ll have an answer for you.”  
  
Seraphina watches him for a while before she rolls her eyes the way she wouldn’t in front of anyone else. “I only hope you and the Goldstein sisters know what you are doing. The last thing this city needs is more destruction.”  
  
“You have vastly overestimated all of us, I’m afraid,” Graves says. “We’re just putting the pieces back together.”  
  
“Start putting yourself back together,” Seraphina says as she stands from the armchair. She approaches him, laying her cool palm on his forehead. “Shave. _Shower,_ for Merlin’s sake, Percy. Get some exercise.”  
  
He sighs. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, a little ashamed that he leans into her touch, the way he hasn’t since he was a child.  
  
“Ignore my missives again and I’ll send someone far worse than I to scold you next time,” she says and hums as he grimaces. “Go outside, feel the sun, take a walk, and don’t buy any more scotch.”  
  
Graves grumbles a little, but she’s gone as quickly as she came, and he sits up. Runs his hands through his wild hair and looks around the living room, the empty bottles, the dust gathering everywhere. He rubs his eyes and leans back, staring up at the ceiling.  
  
It has to change. He knows it does.  
  
“Shave,” he decides. “Baby steps.”  
  
He shaves and brushes his teeth, his breath frankly offensive, and decides that he might as well shower. His hair is longer than it usually is, growing in at the sides, and once he’s out of the shower and staring at himself in the lightly fogged mirror, an idea springs forth.  
  
A dangerous one, maybe, but most of his ideas involve danger. Danger for himself, his Aurors, dangerous for the criminals involved. Dangerous for a young man who looks at him with stars in his eyes, when he thinks Graves won’t notice.  
  
He gets dressed in nicer clothes than he’s been wearing for a long while and is surprised at how much better it makes him feel. He won’t tell Seraphina that, of course.  
  
Graves Apparates to the alley behind the apartment building and enters it quietly, avoiding the landlady so she doesn’t rope him into conversations about strange male visitors, no matter how fresh they look.  
  
He stops in front of the door and has a brief moment of paralyzing panic, so unlike anything he used to feel, but that’s becoming more commonplace these days. He nearly talks himself out of it, nearly turns around and runs down the stairs, and pretends he never left his home, never was here.  
  
If Graves is to ever be himself again, even just slightly, the cowardliness is going to have to be left behind.  
  
He knocks on the door and waits.  
  
Queenie answers and looks momentarily surprised, before she grins, wide and dimpled. “What an unexpected surprise,” she says. “And don’t you look good, honey! All freshened up!”  
  
Graves feels vaguely like he’s visiting his old Auntie and shakes himself. “Hi, Queenie,” he says. “May I come in?”  
  
“Of course, honey,” she says and steps aside to let him in. “We was only working on a Potions essay.”  
  
Graves steps inside and looks at the small living room, where Credence is sat, hunched over the book he’s using to write his essay on. But Credence isn’t looking at the essay anymore, his eyes on Graves, wide and almost fearful.  
  
Before Graves can wonder why, Queenie says, “Ain’t he looking so much better, doll?” to Credence.  
  
Credence flushes red and ducks his head down again, scratching his quill frantically across the parchment. “Hello, Mister Graves.”  
  
Graves walks closer to the sofa and peers down at the papers littering the table, the books opened to a certain potion. “Sleeping Draught already? You’ll be done with your seventh year by June.”  
  
Credence’s ears are red again and Graves keeps his attention on the book.  
  
“What subject do you like most?”  
  
He doesn’t answer right away, but finally murmurs, “History of Magic.”  
  
Graves wants to cry. Of course Credence’s favorite subject would be the most boring one, but he supposes he can’t fault him for that. Even if the books do drone on and on, he suspects Tina and Queenie have made lessons more interesting than his professor at Ilvermorny ever did.  
  
“He’s real good with Transfiguration too,” Queenie says with a smile. “A natural knack for it.”  
  
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Graves says as he continues to peer down at Credence. His hands are trembling as he writes and he wonders if this is a good idea, before deciding that his intentions are hardly nefarious. “How would you like a break?”  
  
Credence looks sharply up at him and frowns. “For what?”  
  
“I was thinking of a walk.”  
  
“It’s getting nicer and nicer every day out there,” Queenie says. “A walk seems to be just what you both need.”  
  
“Thank you, Miss Goldstein,” Graves says dryly. “Credence?”  
  
Credence looks a bit spooked, but when doesn’t he? He finally nods and puts his essay on the table to dry before he stands and straightens his clothes out.  
  
“Should I bring money?” he asks.  
  
“I think I have some spare change rattling around somewhere,” Graves says. Queenie snorts inelegantly and Credence looks confused by it, but Graves doesn’t explain. He straightens out Credence’s collar before gesturing for him to follow. “Let’s go before Tina gets home and stops us.”  
  
“She works late nights now,” Credence says as he shuffles along behind Graves. “She says her caseload has increased lately. Goodbye, Miss Goldstein.”  
  
“Bye, honey,” Queenie says as she cleans up the table and sends a rather lascivious wink toward Graves.  
  
He coughs as he leads Credence out of the apartment and carefully down the stairs, avoiding the steps that creak. He catches Credence smiling and wonders if he’s run into the landlady by now and understands the utmost of caution is needed to get past her.  
  
They step out onto the sunny street outside and Graves leads Credence into the alley. He looks up and down it, then at Credence. “I assume you’ve traveled by Apparition by now?”  
  
Credence nods and grimaces.  
  
“Yes, it can be hard to get used to,” Graves says with a wry smirk. “Up for it?” He offers his arm.  
  
Credence looks at him, then his arm, and nods as he takes it. Graves tightens his arm to his side and Apparates and soon they are standing on a cobblestone street in Manhattan, mostly deserted.  
  
After Credence has gotten his bearings, making sure up is up and down is down still, he looks around and frowns. “Uptown?” he asks. “We never really had the occasion, but sometimes I would…” He clears his throat. “If I was done handing out fliers early, I’d walk.”  
  
“Long walk,” Graves says mildly and Credence nods. “Have you ever been to a barber, Credence?”  
  
Credence looks at him again, his eyebrows raised high on his forehead. “A barber?” he repeats. “No. My moth— she always cut our hair.”  
  
“Thought so,” Graves sighs. “A cut from a barber is an essential experience every young man must have. A rite of passage, if you will, and the stepping stone from boy to man. A prerogative we’re all due, Credence.”  
  
Credence is smiling, but he’s looking at the brick wall in front of them now, rather than at Graves. “You’re making that up, Mister Graves.”  
  
“I am,” Graves agrees. “But there is something special about getting your first cut at a skilled barber.”  
  
“Are you saying you don’t like my hair?”  
  
“Do _you_ like it?”  
  
Credence hesitates, then sighs. “I’ve never known anything else. I’ve kept it up myself since… it all happened.”  
  
“I suspected as much. How about I go back to…” he trails off and flutters his hand at his hair. “...not this and you choose who you’d rather be?”  
  
Credence meets his eye now and peers at him for a while before he smiles faintly and nods. “I like the sound of that,” he says. “Please, Mister Graves.”  
  
“Good man,” Graves says as he claps Credence on the shoulder. He steps through the brick wall and into the familiar shop, breathing in the scent of aftershave and cologne and cigars.  
  
Of course Credence is not next to him.  
  
Graves steps back out. “Apologies,” he mutters, his cheeks warm, as Credence gapes at the wall. “Don’t think about it. Just walk through it.”  
  
“What if I—”  
  
“You won’t.”  
  
They step through the wall, side by side, shoulders brushing together, and Credence breathes a sigh of relief. He looks around and Graves tries not to smile at his obvious approval.

It’s a fine place, dark mahogany floors and walls, shining steel barbers chairs, with splashes of red furniture here and there.  
  
“Percival!” Tony shouts from his station, waving the straight razor through the air, his client watching it with some wariness. “Never thought I’d see you again, boy!”  
  
Graves grimaces and looks at Credence. “Prepare to hear a lot of stories about Marta.”  
  
“About who—?”  
  
“What have you done?!” Tony shouts, still brandishing the razor, as the man in the chair below him flinches. “It’s a rat’s nest!”  
  
“He’s got a point,” Credence says quietly.  
  
Graves gasps, almost genuinely. “Mind your tongue,” he says and steers Credence to the waiting area. “Tony. Good to see Marta is still at work.”  
  
Tony pats his rotund belly. “It’s peach cobbler season soon,” he announces proudly. “You look like you might need a few yourself. Still gaining, I imagine, after that nasty business.”  
  
“Nasty business,” Graves mutters darkly as Credence bites his knuckle, looking like he’s trying to hide a grin. “That’s one way to put it. Finish up and let me introduce you to Credence.”  
  
“Credence, eh?” Tony asks, looking over his walrus-sized moustache at Credence. “Looks like he needs some peach cobbler himself.”  
  
“Don’t think anything sticks to him, Tony.”  
  
Tony nods as he carries on shaving his client’s cheeks. “Nothing stuck to me either, until I hit forty. Just around the corner, isn’t it, Percival?”  
  
“The greys remind me every morning,” Graves says as he gestures for Credence to take a seat and sits next to him. “No Marta in my life though.”  
  
“One day,” Tony says sympathetically.  
  
Graves rolls his eyes and Credence smiles and it’s… alright.  
  
It’s good. Better than he was expecting.  
  
Tony finishes with his client and Credence asks Graves to go first, not so surprising, and he sits down and prepares to be pampered.  
  
“It’s more than a haircut, you see,” he tells Credence as he looks in the mirror at him, Tony nodding at his side. “It’s an _experience.”_  
  
“I’ll take your word for it, Mister Graves.”  
  
Tony goes on and on about his wife Marta as he gets Graves back into the shape he was before it all happened. His hair hasn’t been altogether healthy but by the time Tony is done, it’s shining and full again and he appraises himself in the mirror.  
  
He doesn’t expect to feel like he’s staring at an imposter, but there he is. _That man_ wore his hair as impeccably as Graves always did and he feels an irrational need to destroy Tony’s good work, but he works through the storm with a smile and a handshake of thanks.  
  
His knees are wobbly but he walks with more confidence than he feels as he goes to join Credence.  
  
“Are you alright, Mister Graves?” Credence asks him in a low voice as Tony vanishes the cuts of hair and cleans his station.  
  
“Perfectly well,” Graves answers without looking at Credence. He can see through him well enough already and he’s worried what his eyes will show. “Have you thought about what you want?”  
  
“Yes,” Credence says. “Not what I have.”  
  
Graves’ heart leaps a little but he curses it back into submission as he rolls his sleeve cuffs down. “You heard the man, Tony. He wants magic.”  
  
“We have an abundance of that here, boy,” Tony says joyfully and gestures for Credence to join him.  
  
Graves watches closely, a bit worried now that Credence will have an unfamiliar razor at his neck, but he sees that Credence’s eyes are closed in the mirror. Relaxed, for once, and he wonders how that can be. He suspects Tina and Queenie have been good for him, the way he hoped they’d be, and he doesn’t know why it smarts.  
  
Tony cuts away the bowl style and goes shorter than Graves was expecting. He talks in lower tones to Credence than he normally would, probably sensing Credence’s general shyness and wish to not have any attention on himself whatsoever. He gives him a shave and finishes with a hot towel that massages Credence’s neck. Once he has vanished the hair trimmings, he gestures for Credence to stand and he does.  
  
Graves stares, gritting his teeth so his mouth doesn’t fall open.  
  
Credence is inspecting himself in the mirror, running his hand along his hair, cut short now, but sharp, with a small part above his temple. It’s as if years have dropped on to him, no longer looking like an oversized sixteen year old, but like the twenty year old man he is. High cheekbones and a jawline that could cut nearly as well as Graves’ own.  
  
Or so he’s been told.  
  
Tony watches Credence with a smile, always more perceptive than he seems at first glance. “Out with the old and in with the new, as they say.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” Credence says and steps away from the mirror. He glances at Graves and back at Tony. “How much—?”  
  
“On my tab,” Graves says as he stands and comes closer to Credence. His shoulders are still tense and he looks like he’s about to bow his head at any moment and Graves rests his hand on his back.  
  
Credence steadily relaxes, shoulders falling loosely, and he thanks Tony and Graves himself before they leave the shop.  
  
They step into the cool April afternoon and Graves breathes in the fresh air. He’s more himself in appearance than he has been since it all happened and while it straightens his spine and puts a purpose in his step, he feels like he’s stepped into someone else’s shoes. Not his own.  
  
This is his imposter now, wearing his face all over again, his clothes and using his wand.  
  
“Mister Graves?”  
  
He looks at Credence and sees concern. “Have you ever had a Manhattan soft pretzel?”  
  
Credence blinks and frowns a little. “There were only hot dogs near the church and I’ve never carried money.”  
  
“Pretzel it is,” Graves says and strides down the sidewalk.  
  
Credence strides down it at his side, his head straight, as if a previous weight had held it down, as if it might be gone, even if it’s for only this day.  
  
Whether there is an imposter in his shoes or not, Graves will take it.  
  
It’s enough.  
  
——  
  
They find a bench to sit on while they eat their soft pretzels. Graves would normally lounge, his legs stuck out in front of him, but his spine is straight and his eyes dart back and forth across the street and sidewalk, always looking, always prepared.  
  
It pains him when he glances at Credence and sees him in nearly the same position, doing the same exact thing.  
  
He wants to tell Credence that he knows, that he understands, that they’re both fucked, but it can get better. He’s seen it, in some Aurors who had to retire early, that one case ruining their foundation. Seen the way they are at reunions, softer smiles and kinder eyes, healed in some way.  
  
He wants to tell Credence that will be them someday, that they’ll be able to lounge in Manhattan and not worry about who may materialize in front of them.  
  
That one day Grindelwald will be destroyed, merely a ghost, a whisper carried on the wind, and they will be able to live without fear, without the anger, the ever prevailing rage.  
  
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how, doesn’t want to upset Credence, doesn’t want to seem like he’s diminishing the pain he’s felt, the abuse he’s gone through.  
  
The mere thought of that woman’s hands on him, of Graves’ _own_ hands on him, makes him regret the pretzel and long for a bottle of scotch.  
  
But Credence must be thinking something similar, must be too much like Graves, because he asks, quietly, “Will it ever be the same?”  
  
And Graves sighs and asks, “Do you want it to be?”  
  
“No,” Credence says. “But before… before I met him, the only thing I had to worry about was escaping Ma. Making it on my own. Now I have to worry about escaping myself. My own head and what lives inside me. I don’t think it can be controlled, Mister Graves,” he admits, so quietly and shamefully that it devastates Graves’ already devastated heart.  
  
“It can’t,” he says and watches as Credence looks sharply at him, wounded, his eyes wild with hopelessness. “It can’t be controlled, Credence. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be removed. That doesn’t mean you’ll have to live with it forever.”  
  
Credence looks at his lap. “There’s only been one case of an Obscurus being removed from someone. She died.”  
  
“She did,” Graves says. “But she was younger than you. Smaller, weaker in body, through no fault of her own. She didn’t have the knowledge you have now, the support. And she didn’t have MACUSA.”  
  
“You seem very confident in the place that didn’t realize you were locked in a cellar for months.”  
  
Graves’ lips thin, but he can concede the point. “I don’t blame them for the cunning of a dark wizard,” he says slowly. Credence merely stares at him. “Not completely,” Graves amends. “I mostly blame myself.”  
  
“Why? You didn’t know what was going to happen.”  
  
“I didn’t,” Graves sighs. “But if I hadn’t been detached from my colleagues, they might have noticed.”  
  
Credence doesn’t say anything for a while. He wrings his hands together and watches people pass them by. “I wish I had met you before.”  
  
Graves looks up at the blue sky above and tries not to wish the same thing. “I don’t think you would have liked me much.”  
  
“I would have liked your face.”  
  
There’s a pause as Graves raises an eyebrow and glances sidelong at Credence. He goes appropriately red after a while and puts his hand over his forehead.  
  
“You have a kind face is what I mean,” he mumbles.  
  
Graves chuckles. “Well, I’m glad one New Yorker thinks so,” he says and smiles as Credence sheepishly looks at him. “You see people differently than most, Credence.”  
  
“So do you,” Credence says. “You have to. I had to.” He looks at the sky as well. “Maybe one day we won’t have to worry about the true intentions behind someone’s eyes.”  
  
Graves wonders if it’ll be possible one day. If it ever could be, knowing the things he knows, seeing the things he’s seen. If Credence could ever truly trust someone, someone who offers him comfort and love but beats him with his own belt one night, the beginning of years of heartbreak. If he could look at a man and be charmed by him, even feel like he’s loved by him, before that man abandons him, in the cruelest of ways.  
  
And, again, he thinks of his face. The imposter behind it.  
  
The imposter Grindelwald. The imposter Percival Graves.  
  
Both of them, using the same skin, and neither what Credence actually wants.  
  
Even if he doesn’t know it yet.  
  
“Mister Graves?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Are you leaving?”  
  
Perceptive man. Seeing people differently than most, reading the intentions behind their eyes.  
  
“For a while,” Graves says quietly, because he owes it to Credence to tell the truth. “I won’t be far and Tina will be able to contact me. I think it might be a good idea for me to get back in touch with who Percival Graves is.”  
  
Credence looks at him, then, meeting his gaze levelly. He looks so different, Graves thinks with a pang of longing, less hidden, hidden by the hair that woman gave him, hidden by the weight constantly sitting on his shoulders, bending his spine.  
  
“How?” he asks softly.  
  
“Retracing my footsteps,” Graves answers. “And seeing what I lost along the way.”  
  
Credence touches his hand then, his fingertips cold, and Graves wraps his own around them, warm and steady.  
  
“Will I see you again?”  
  
_I hope so,_ Graves wants to say, _I hope you see me for me, for the real Percival Graves, not for the man who promised you so much. I hope you see me, Credence, the way I see you, and I hope that when that day comes, we’ll both find what we’re looking for._  
  
“Yes,” is what he says, instead. “Of course.”  
  
——  
  
“You’re leaving?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“He needs you, Percival.”  
  
“He needs _separation_ from me.”  
  
“What about his Obscurus?”  
  
“I’m going to write you a letter. Follow what it says. MACUSA will help.”  
  
“You can’t let them take it out of him without _you_ bein’ there, Percival.”  
  
“It wouldn’t be _me,_ Queenie, and I know you understand that.”  
  
“Oh, honey. You keep telling yourself that.”  
  
——  
  
Graves reinforces the protections around the brownstone, which will only allow Credence and Tina in, and doesn’t question why he chooses Credence. It seems right in the moment, a place that might be familiar to him, protected in the strongest way possible.  
  
He looks up at his home for a while, the sun’s golden rays brightening the white walls and darker trims. It looks homey and welcoming, more than any home he’s ever lived in has, and he thinks that’s the crux of it.  
  
Some wizards might have gone through his exact experience and rebound excellently, with nary a nightmare, let alone an entire identity crisis. They may be relieved to be back home, with their friends and family, and they don’t turn to booze or feel like a fake.  
  
Graves had thought he was made of the sterner stuff, like them. But he’s been damaged by Grindelwald, damaged permanently, and he thinks he knows why.  
  
So he goes back to the place where it all began.  
  
The old protections are still in place when he Apparates to the gates. He can feel the magic gently pulsing, turning away any no-majs that might come wandering too close, and wonders why he bothers.  
  
Let people see. Let them see the scars, even if they don’t understand them.  
  
The gate is only half on, hanging precariously, creaking ominously in a light breeze, so unlike the strong, unbending wrought iron he knew as a child. The Graves’ family crest still sits proudly above it, but it’s faded and he can’t see the knight or the raven and thinks it’s for the best.  
  
The grounds are filthy with high weeds, all the hedgerows long dead, the rose bushes grey husks. The oak trees are tall still, and alive, providing the only splash of green on the entire property, but he remembers climbing them to escape the world below and thinks they must carry tainted memories anyway.  
  
Grey brick has been darkened to nearly black, from weather and magic, and the manor looks more foreboding for it. He stares at the familiar architecture, gothic and predictable, only one of the two spires still standing.  
  
It looks like the manor was abandoned eighty years ago, not twenty, and he smiles wryly at the thought.  
  
Disease, he thinks, ravaging the host.  
  
He pulls his wand out as he approaches the doors and sees that they’ve been broken open at some point. By the wind, by magic, by one of the few that might be allowed in.  
  
When he steps inside, he lights his wand and looks at the destruction that’s been left behind. The walls are half rotted, only slivers of moth-eaten curtains hanging on the long, vertical windows. The carpeting is gone, only leaving cold marble beneath his feet, dirtied and grey now, unlike the cream it once was. There are cracks in some areas, like a great weight had fallen on the marble, or a spell filled with hate had rebounded off of it.  
  
He wanders the kitchens and dining rooms and parlors, seeing the ghosts of his past in every room. Father, smoking a cigar and cracking an egg at the table, Mother, drinking wine and laughing with other witches, hissing at him to go back to his rooms if he dared wander in.  
  
Nanny, as he called her, smiling at him, the only warmth that these walls ever held, as she took him by the hand and gave him warmed milk with honey to put him to sleep.  
  
He avoids his father and mother’s room and merely gives his own a cursory glance. The Quidditch flags, gently faded, the dark blue carpeting stained black, the wardrobe turned over, old clothes scattered everywhere.  
  
It’s Eliza’s room that he’s drawn to most.  
  
Graves sees it as it was when he pushes the door open. A blanket of burgundy, in the carpets and satin bed sheets, in the window curtains. Creams to balance it out, and dark blue, the same dark blue as their family crest. The windows open wide, curtains drawn, sunlight filtering through and a breeze blowing through her long, black hair.  
  
He blinks and the spell is broken. It is dull in here now, the burgundys a mottled purple and black, the creams stained yellow, curtains drawn, blocking out the last bit of sunlight.  
  
The room had been cleaned of personal possessions before it had gone to ruin, as she had fled for a different life, not knowing that the disease here was festering and would eventually pull her back.  
  
When he steps into the courtyard outside and breathes in the fresh air, cold tears in his eyes, he wonders why he was the one to escape the manor’s grasp and not her, so much braver than he had been.  
  
The marble fountains are long dry, dirty and moldy leaves laying in their basins, but he passes them without mourning what they once were. Beauty, so that you might forget your hell, Eliza had once said.  
  
He has the sudden desire to bring Credence here, to shake his shoulders and say _see, this is Hell, not what she told you, not with fire and brimstone, but your own blood and expectations, cold iron and strong marble, and screams, not from demons, but screams from the children trapped here._ _  
_ _  
_ But he knows Credence has already experienced hell, of his own mother’s making, and that he knows it just as intimately as Graves knows it.  
  
_Percival Graves! From the Graves family, old Silas’ son?_ _  
_ _  
_ _Yes._ _  
_ _  
_ _How can I say no? A strong bloodline like yours only produces the best wizards our world could hope for. You’ll move up the ranks, my boy, you’ll be Director one day, mark my words!_ _  
_ _  
_ _Yes, sir._  
  
He laughs a little as he thinks of it, looks at the oak trees hanging over the family cemetery, and wants to hiss at his father’s grave, _it wasn’t your blood that made me who I am, it was my blood, my destiny, my choices._  
  
Instead Graves walks by it and his mother’s, and the brother’s that he never knew, and continues through the trees.  
  
They open to the Allagash river, a breathtaking sight atop these well-hidden cliffs, and he stares out at the water that leads to Eagle Lake or the Atlantic, eventually.  
  
_Don’t put me in the cemetery next to them. Put me over the river and let me soar to freedom. Do you remember when we soared over the river, when we were young, when we used to fly?_  
  
Graves looks up at the sky.  
  
_Free as a bird._ _  
_ _  
_ _Fly again, Percival. For me, won’t you?_  
  
——  
  
Graves stays in the old cottage on the river that belonged to Nanny. It’s small and takes him a while to get it back into a livable state. But it’s comfortable here, the manor above hidden away, from his view and his mind.  
  
He lets nature burrow its way back into him, before the skyscrapers and MACUSA, before Ilvermorny, before he cared too much about his robes to dirty them with soil.  
  
It means coffee with squirrels and fishing with gulls and walking with foxes in the woods.  
  
It means letting his body get used to the lack of scotch, no matter how easy it would be to get some, and letting his body remember what it was like to be carefree, once upon a time. Letting his hair grow out and a beard grow in, not worrying about his appearance.  
  
Tina gets messages to him occasionally, mostly mundane, about how things are going at MACUSA, but also how things are going with Credence.  
  
He reads those parts over and over again, between the lines, looking for anything that Credence might be saying to him.  
  
_Credence is happier,_ she writes, _he smiles more. But he stares out of the window so much and seems to be looking for something and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to help him find it. Family, maybe? We try our best and I know he’s fond of us, but we aren’t his family._ _  
_ _  
_ _Maybe, when the Obscurus is gone, he’ll find them._  
  
Graves’ hands shake when he reads that letter and he reads it over and over again until the trembling ceases.  
  
He drinks in every mention of Credence that he can over the months and notices that the tremor in his hand fades. Even when the nightmares find him, as they still occasionally do, the tremor lasts for an hour or two and it’s gone again.  
  
_He’s getting better and better with Defense spells. Quicker, more sure, and I’m a little afraid he might actually try to become an Auror one day. I know it’s your fault, of course, he still looks up to you so much._ _  
_ _  
_ _Queenie says he misses you. That he thinks about you and wonders where you are, if you’re healing, when you’ll come back. If you ever will._ _  
_ _  
_ _Personally, I don’t think it’s very healthy._  
  
Graves laughs for a while at that and turns on the gramophone for the first time.  
  
He dances to it a week later, socks soft beneath his feet, gliding over the smooth floor, with no one around but the birds outside and the squirrels burying nuts for the upcoming winter.  
  
_It’s been six months,_ Tina writes as the first snowflakes begin to fall, always early this far northeast. _It’s been six months and Credence says that you told him, when he found you, that he would go looking for MACUSAs help one day. He says you were right and he’s ready._ _  
_ _  
_ _He’s going to come forward. There have been no incidents, but he says that won’t last forever, and one day it’ll break loose again. He wants to try and be free of it._ _  
_ _  
_ _You should be here for that, don’t you think? What if it doesn’t go the way we hope? He’d want you there._  
  
Graves goes ice fishing when Eagle Lake freezes over and decides he hates it as much as he did when he was a child, giving up early.  
  
_Miss Goldstein was kind enough to let me send this letter alongside hers, so that I might be able to contact my Director of Magical Security without a full blown manhunt. Look at what you have done, Percival, reduced me to asking Porpentina Goldstein for a favor._ _  
_ _  
_ _The boy is very interesting. I should have realized he was who you were hiding from me. Something you wouldn’t have done, once upon a time, but I understand why you have now._ _  
_ _  
_ _We were mistaken before. We will help him now._ _  
_ _  
_ _I do not know if we can save him when the Obscurus is taken, but Mister Scamander has come from England, being the only one with any experience in this matter. Mister Barebone approves but Miss Goldstein - Queenie, that is - tells me that he would prefer your expertise as well._ _  
_ _  
_ _I rather would too, but most of all, I hope you’ve found peace again._ _  
_ _  
_ _Two months, three weeks, and one day._ _  
_ _  
_ _Are you still counting, Percy?_  
  
Graves yells into the trees at night with the coyotes and puts a Christmas tree in the cottage in the morning, decorating it with blue and silver orbs. He leaves it up well past Christmas morning.  
  
_It’s happening tomorrow. Will you come?_ _  
_ _  
_ _I think he normally keeps his secrets for Queenie, but he told me last night that it was Percival Graves who keeps him up at night now, and not the man who used his face._ _  
_ _  
_ _He didn’t sound upset when he said it, but his eyes were sad. Sad like Queenie’s, when she thinks about that no-maj - Jacob - and I’m afraid to put a name to it. Queenie said it’s real, whether I’d like to name it or not._ _  
_ _  
_ _He needs you._  
  
Graves sips coffee in the morning, a tremor back in his hand and cowardliness back in his heart, and reads the paper he bribed a barn owl into delivering for him, and doesn’t feel much of anything when he reads the headline _Grindelwald Still At Large: Where Is He Hiding?_  
  
He dresses warm for the day, the snowfall thick outside, his boots sturdy enough to trudge through it. And he walks, walks through the woods and along the bank of the river, and thinks about skyscrapers and MACUSA and the rooms buried in its depths where an Obscurial will meet his fate.  
  
The glowing, silver light dashing through the trees ahead of him gives him pause. Graves watches, entranced, as a winged horse, pearly and proud, gallops to him, leaving no hoofprints in the snow below.  
  
“He’s escaped,” Tina’s voice says, echoing off the snow and trees, tight and breathless. “We nearly had it but then he— he broke through everything, all the protections, and he’s disappeared, we’re tracking—”  
  
Graves Apparates out of the forest and into a familiar neighborhood, bright with the cold, winter sunlight, snow pushed up onto the sidewalks, and blanketing the tops of the windows and the roof of the brownstone.  
  
Part of the roof is caved in, he can see, a hole blown wide into it.  
  
There’s a _crack_ next to him and Tina and Queenie appear, along with an oddly dressed man with red-brown hair who blinks quickly in the sun, frowning as he looks past Graves and at the brownstone.  
  
“Oh, Merlin, he became a lumberjack,” he hears Tina mutter to Queenie, who merely beams at him.  
  
“You knew right where he’d go, didn’t you, honey?” Queenie says with approval.  
  
Another _crack_ and Seraphina strides forward, a few Aurors not far behind her. She looks him up and down, pursing her lips with the faint disapproval she always has, before she sighs.  
  
“This might have been avoided if you’d been there to support him in the first place.”  
  
“I thought being fashionably late to the party was in these days?” Graves asks and smiles as she glares at him. “I’ve got it.”  
  
“Y—You do?” Tina asks as he turns on his heel and strides for the door. “Mister Graves, sir, you do look better, but—”  
  
“Tina,” the unfamiliar man says, his voice light and soft, kind, and very English. “Let him.”  
  
Mister Scamander then, Graves thinks, and reminds himself to thank him later, for not even flinching at the walking reminder of who once sentenced him to death, and steps past the magical barriers protecting his home. He pulls his wand out and flicks it, blocking Tina’s access, and steps inside.  
  
He can’t say that he expected this. He hoped, hoped beyond hope, that they could remove the Obscurus and free Credence from his prison. He can see why Seraphina might blame him for this, he does himself, but the thought that Credence might not have seen _him,_ but someone else, had still been there. That if he had approached him in the bowels of MACUSA, he might have caused more destruction than good.  
  
He might have caused Credence’s death, if he had been a reminder of Grindelwald.  
  
Graves steps over the mess of wood and roof tiles and follows the worst of it up the stairs. He sticks his wand in his pocket and makes his way down the hall, until he gets to the bedroom Credence had slept in, those few days he had been there.  
  
He stands in the doorway and looks inside.  
  
Credence is only a vague shape of a man, surrounded by swirling darkness and deep embers, and the gleam of white eyes. He’s still, hovering in the corner of the room, and Graves stares at the beauty of despair.  
  
“Credence.”  
  
And all at once, the Obscurial is gone and replaced by the man, who staggers backwards and begins to fall.  
  
Graves is still quick and he’s caught Credence before he can fall, looking at his pale, clammy skin, feeling him trembling like a leaf.  
  
“Mister Graves,” Credence says quietly, his voice as soft and wounded as he remembers it. “I failed.”  
  
“You didn’t,” Graves says as he guides Credence to the floor, sitting him up against the wall. He keeps his arm around his shoulders, the other placed against his chest, over his heart. “Don’t you know why we fall?”  
  
Credence doesn’t answer, only gives a quick shake of his head, turning and pressing his face to Graves’ neck.  
  
“So we can pull ourselves back up,” Graves says. “You didn’t fail. You only gave yourself the opportunity to try again.”  
  
Credence continues to tremble, his hands clutching at Graves’ shirt. “I thought I might see you. In the back of the room, watching. I thought you might have been there.”  
  
“I should have been,” Graves says and knows he has failed Credence again. That cowardliness still hasn’t left him. But he will do better. “I’m sorry I wasn’t. I'm so sorry, Credence.”  
  
“You were afraid it’d make everything worse.”  
  
“Yeah,” Graves sighs and brushes Credence’s hair back from his forehead, where it’s grown longer. “No one ever said I was intelligent.”  
  
“Everyone says that about you.”  
  
“I don’t,” Graves chuckles. “What do you think?”  
  
Credence doesn’t say anything for a while, but his trembling is slowing down, and his fingers are relaxing. “I think you’re a smart man, Mister Graves. You were right about me.”  
  
“In what way?”  
  
“You were right that I couldn’t separate you from him. Queenie told me you felt that way, not long ago. I saw you, Percival Graves, but I heard him. I wanted him to hold me the way that he did, him to promise me things you’d never give.”  
  
Graves looks up at the ceiling for a while, stroking the nape of Credence’s neck.  
  
“But it didn’t take me nearly a year to know better.”  
  
“No?” Graves croaks.  
  
“No,” Credence says. “I knew when you left. He wouldn’t have left me. He would have stayed with me. And if he didn’t, he would have come back much sooner.”  
  
Graves doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s not sure what Credence is telling him, exactly, or how it’s making him feel. His chest is tight and his heart is beating harder than it has in a very long time. As hard as it had beat when Tina had pulled him out of that hole.  
  
“That’s how I knew who you were. Really were,” Credence says and finally lifts his gaze, looking into Graves’ eyes. “And when I think about you now, I only think about _you.”_  
  
“I’m sorry—”  
  
“Please don’t, Percival,” Credence says. “Don’t apologize for needing to get your own head on straight.”  
  
Graves laughs a little and presses his forehead against Credence’s. “Took a little longer than I’d like. But I still should have been there today. I shouldn't have underestimated how far you've come. Will you give me another chance? Will you try again?”  
  
Credence moves his hands into Graves’ hair, and down to the beard he’s grown, his thumb ghosting over his lips. He looks at Graves again, eyes dark but soft in a way he’s never seen, confident but still wary.  
  
“Yes,” he whispers. “If you’re there, I won’t fall.”  
  
Graves smiles and thinks about kissing him.  
  
“I want something else from you too,” Credence says, before he can.  
  
He raises his eyebrows. “I’m prepared to give you just about anything, but I don’t like that tone.”  
  
Credence shrugs. “I think you might owe me it.”  
  
“I like that even less, but I’m sure it’s true.”  
  
“Queenie sings. She sings… often.”  
  
Graves blinks and nods. “Yes, I’ve heard her do so once or twice. Heard Tina complain about it a lot more than that.”  
  
“Tina talks about Mister Scamander the way some people talk about Christ.”  
  
“Oh. Well, that’s rather horrifying and incredibly worrying—”  
  
“You’ve got the brownstone. I’ll… I’ll fix it, after this, I’m sorry, and it’ll be like new. You don’t sing or talk about Mister Scamander every day.”  
  
Graves opens his mouth, then closes it. “You want to live with me,” he says. “You don’t know what sorts of bad habits I have.”  
  
“I know which ones you don’t have anymore and that’s good enough for me.”  
  
“Credence,” Graves says. “Credence,” he repeats, because he hasn’t said his name out loud in so long, and because he doesn’t know what to say beyond it. Doesn’t know the right path to choose, fears he hasn’t known that in a long time.  
  
But Credence doesn’t see Grindelwald anymore. Credence meets his eye now, holds his head high, and speaks with surety. Credence has healed as much as Graves has, in his own way, and he had hoped.  
  
Hoped that Credence would see him, see him as he is, see him the way he sees Credence.  
  
Hoped that, on this day, they’d both find what they were looking for.  
  
“The house _is_ big enough for two,” he finally manages to say.  
  
It’s Credence who kisses first.  
  
——  
  
“You’re getting— what now?”  
  
“Married. _Mare-eed._ It’s what two people who are very in love do. Thanks, by the way.”  
  
“But… but he’s so… _English.”_  
  
“If that’s your only complaint about him, I’d say I’ve done well.”  
  
Graves frowns menacingly and organizes the increasingly large stack of documents on his desk. He gestures at it emphatically.  
  
“You can’t leave when it looks like this.”  
  
Tina rolls her eyes. “There are about thirty Aurors out there that can help just as well as I can.”  
  
“Tina, Porpentina, my one true soulmate—”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“You cannot go off and get married right now, I need you here. I reject your request for leave.”  
  
“She’ll go to the President,” Credence mutters from his own corner of Graves’ office, flicking his wand and adding to the stack that Graves scowls at.  
  
“I will,” Tina threatens as she shakes her finger. “We could always do doubles.”  
  
“Do doubles? What in Merlin’s name does that mean?”  
  
“Do you have a romantic bone in your body?”  
  
“A few,” Credence answers and Tina mock gags. “She means we can get married alongside them.”  
  
Graves stares between them, his brow furrowed, before he points an accusing finger at Credence. “You’ve been conspiring with the Goldsteins and Mister Scamander.”  
  
Credence smiles, bright like the sun, cheerful and cheeky, and Graves feels the same way he always does when he sees it.  
  
The way he felt when he saw it that first time, many floors down from where they are now, as a man was finally freed from his prison.  
  
Like he’s madly in love with Credence Barebone and always destined to be.  
  
“What do you think, Mister Graves?” Credence asks and flicks his wand again, another parchment paper falling gracefully on top of the stack.  
  
Graves swivels around in his chair, squinting at Credence. “I think, _Mister Graves,_ that might be one of your finest ideas yet.”  
  
“It was my idea— oh, _never mind,”_ Tina mutters as she turns on her heels and stalks out of the office, closing the door behind her.  
  
Graves supposes it’s because Credence has taken up residence in his lap and is kissing him soundly.  
  
“Say it again,” Credence murmurs when he pulls away, his hands in Graves’ hair, mussing it all up, a truly bad habit of his that Graves won’t be breaking anytime soon.  
  
“Hmm? Oh,” Graves says and clears his throat meaningfully before lowering his voice. “A spring wedding, Mister Graves?”  
  
Credence’s laughter is light and musical, soft and free, and Graves holds him a little tighter, thinking that healing comes in so many different forms.  
  
With the flick of a wand, a warm embrace, a safe home, under the canopy of pine trees, through the happiness of the one you love most in this world.  
  
A spring wedding, shared with friends and found families, and the everlasting promise of tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> If any bagginshield followers are reading, I promise I'm still working on a couple long fics!! This one found me rather unexpectedly. Thank you, Erin, for your encouragement!!
> 
> This is my first venture into this fandom and these characters, please take it easy on me! And sorry for any mistakes, I haven't watched the movies since the second one came out because of reasons (mostly pretending the second one doesn't exist) and it's very late and I'm very tired. I may have taken a few liberties with canon as well. I'm not sure if this is any good or not (kind of freakin out that it's terrible actually) but I enjoyed writing it and especially enjoyed writing from Graves' pov. Sometimes I think it's necessary to heal apart, in some cases.
> 
> lksfhaskdfh I'm so scared to be posting this y'all have no idea!
> 
> Kudos and comments mean so much, thank you!


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